this much i know

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Hi.

As a western adult male I don’t match the physique of the local man and so I have struggled to buy a pair of jeans recently that were not designed for someone with the body of a ten-year-old girl. On the odd occasion that I found a pair in the style I like, when I enquire about some in my my size I have usually been presented with a pair of sand blasted crotch ridden monstrosities that even Devvo wouldn’t wear and told ‘same same’….As a result my current look on an evening out is ‘festival nasty’…I look like I’ve lost a fight with an ankle biting bear whilst watching Primal Scream in a sea of shit…

T’other dayi played golf during a thunderstorm. Whilst I’ve been trying hard to get my score down recently a combination of extreme weather and heat ensured I had a pretty crappy round…

Recently I’ve been having a lot of tattooing done and like a fool I decided to go out after work and get drunk the day before I got tattooed. The next morning when the Jason the tattooist started up his gun I lasted about four minutes before sweating heavily and passing out. It was highgly embarrassing although it was nice to be brought round by the ladies at the tattooist with ice tea and a doughnut…

So, I’ve now been living in Vietnam for a year. How do I sum it all up? What have I learnt you may ask…well, this much I now know….

- When leaving the house, the xe-om guy nearest will get you there in one piece and he looks like a mexican villager from ‘the magnificent seven’, the kind who comes to your room and offers you the riches of his village in exchange for killing Eli Wallach. However, the dude with no teeth and the flat cap is far more entertaining and rides like a motherfucker from hell…

- Long Island ice teas plus poker plus wine = bad teaching

- Heatwaves in Saigon piss over English heatwaves

- It’s never too early in the morning to be propositioned by a transsexual on a moped

- Chewing gum is cheaper in the shop, but more fun to buy from the kids that haunt the backpacker part of town

- Durian is a divisive fruit. Some love it, most hate it, and to make ice cream from it is tantamount to making toffee from dog poo

- Few things make you stop in your tracks like a Vietnamese woman in hot pants on a moped

- Few things make you walk quicker than a Vietnamese man in hot pants on a moped

- Most locals in Saigon complain about the cold if the temperature drops below 27 degrees Celsius…the local authority starts gritting the road with salt if it drops below 25.

- Over a ten month period you are unlikely to ever get accustomed to a 40 year old boat builder flashing his twig’n’berries at 9 o’clock in the morning

- My spitting has improved

- As has my ability to be confused by my native language

- Take away food ordered from Ali Akbar will always arrive late and cold

- You can live in Saigon on less than 2 quid a day and that includes three meals and a beer or two

- A childhood watching crappy TV game shows will put you ahead of the race when devising competitive games for Vietnamese language learners…about the only one I can’t adapt is 3-2-1…i give it about another month before i crack that one and start making students wear a bin on ther head....

- Vietnamese people never walk when they can ride an overcrowded and overloaded lift...and rarely do I either

- Nothing raises a classes spirits like a presentation or exercise involving ‘Uncle Ho’

- It is surprisingly easy to fall asleep on the back of stranger’s motorbike

- Vietnamese tattooists are scared to tattoo their own armpits and they like Britpop

- Like most countries, the ladies in Vietnam love a fire-fighter

- Anyone who is heavily tattooed will get stroked by everyone from the sandwich lady to the chap who works in the cinema

- You can drop a waist size just by being here

- The hardest test of self control is sitting drunk in a taxi and not trying to pull the wispy hair from the taxi driver’s facial mole…it’s a local thing…I’ve seen some moles here that would, rather ironically, make you hair curl…

- Funerals will wake you up far more than you ever thought possible

- Bats like Shakespeare too

- Marmite is prohibitively expensive.

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I now have about two weeks left in Saigon before i pack up my stuff and head north. In the meantime, after much indecision it looks like im taking a motorbike trip through the Mekong Delta, then catching trains and buses as i criss cross the country to Hanoi...Might be a while til i post again so in the meantime, hope everyone is well, and have a good summer..or winter depending where you are...

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